Of Ships and Shoe (Prints) and Blood on Walls,
of Cigar Ash and Kings
by Tamara R. Bower
As the maiden post on The Studious Scarlets Society weblog, I want to address a number of events and Firsts. Chief among them, to our incomparable webmistress, Resa Haile: When we batted around the idea four years ago of creating a scion of women Sherlockian authors to discuss Holmes, Doyle, and our work, this was the furthest thing from my mind. So I cannot thank you enough for not only bringing it to fruition, but also for the time, skill and effort you put into realizing this website for us and for the followers of The Studious Scarlets, and, of course, of all things Sherlock Holmes.
Second, I want to note Resa’s impeccable timing: this week marks the 159th birthday of the prince of a man behind the man, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Were it not for Doyle, for his immensely creative imagination and characters in the 56 short stories and the four novels chronicling the cases of the Great Detective Sherlock Holmes, an immeasurable amount of culture on a global level would be nonexistent. Storytelling itself would be impoverished if the man had never been.
Science, too, has benefited greatly. For example, the science of Forensics as we know it would not be what it is without the magnifying glass, the examination of footprints and cigar ashes, and the deduction of the meaning of what the dog did (or didn’t do) in the nighttime, provided to us by Doyle through “the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen...” Sherlock Holmes.
Finally, an ode to that great tale from which we, the society of women writers of Sherlockiana, take our moniker, and which sparked countless stories—those by Doyle and by the innumerable authors who have furthered Sherlock’s adventures, among them the many Scarlets (see the page“Scarlet Lit”)—A Study in Scarlet: We owe our genesis to you, to the brilliance of the discarded wedding ring, to the Trichinopoly cigar ash, to the four-wheeled cab, to the scrawling of “RACHE” on the wall, and to the quest for understanding and revelation through the most insightful deduction the world has known. I thank you for that, and look forward to many more conversations we hope to begin with you here.
Second, I want to note Resa’s impeccable timing: this week marks the 159th birthday of the prince of a man behind the man, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Were it not for Doyle, for his immensely creative imagination and characters in the 56 short stories and the four novels chronicling the cases of the Great Detective Sherlock Holmes, an immeasurable amount of culture on a global level would be nonexistent. Storytelling itself would be impoverished if the man had never been.
Science, too, has benefited greatly. For example, the science of Forensics as we know it would not be what it is without the magnifying glass, the examination of footprints and cigar ashes, and the deduction of the meaning of what the dog did (or didn’t do) in the nighttime, provided to us by Doyle through “the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen...” Sherlock Holmes.
Finally, an ode to that great tale from which we, the society of women writers of Sherlockiana, take our moniker, and which sparked countless stories—those by Doyle and by the innumerable authors who have furthered Sherlock’s adventures, among them the many Scarlets (see the page“Scarlet Lit”)—A Study in Scarlet: We owe our genesis to you, to the brilliance of the discarded wedding ring, to the Trichinopoly cigar ash, to the four-wheeled cab, to the scrawling of “RACHE” on the wall, and to the quest for understanding and revelation through the most insightful deduction the world has known. I thank you for that, and look forward to many more conversations we hope to begin with you here.
Tamara R. Bower
Tamara R. Bower is a former barista and journalist, and is a voracious reader who first discovered Sherlock Holmes with her sons in the ‘80s. She is the co-founder of the Studious Scarlets Society, a member of the Original Tree Worshippers of Rock County, and formerly Second Pip for the John Openshaw Society. Tamara is working on her first novel and also a Sherlockian pastiche based on the character of Rachel Howells when not spending time with her husband, her black lab Cooper and her cats, Falstaff and Prince Harry, or following Sherlockians online.
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